DURHAM – Insofar as weeklong themes go for football teams, moving forward is a good one for Duke.

It strikes a couple of chords for the Blue Devils.

One, obviously, is moving forward from Saturday night’s 28-27 overtime loss to SMU. In a showdown with one of the teams unbeaten in ACC play, the Blue Devils failed to score off of three takeaways in the final nine minutes of regulation and lost on a failed 2-point conversion attempt.

Two, again perhaps obvious, is coach Manny Diaz’s moving forward with Duke while facing the program where he was the head coach from 2019-21.

The Blue Devils head down to Miami keen on not being caught up in the past.

“There’s a great saying that, ‘No man crosses the same river twice, for he’s not the same man and it’s not the same river,’” Diaz said on Monday afternoon. “That’s really the way I look at it.”

Bet you didn’t think you’d get a daily dose of Heraclitus today.

(Here’s the link to an explainer on the quote, which has a little different wording than Diaz gave but the same meaning.)

Diaz was 21-15 at Miami, qualifying for a bowl game each season. In 2020, Miami was 8-3 and finished the season 18th in the Associated Press Top 25. He was fired after a 7-5 season in 2021, a drawn-out process that wound up with the Hurricanes coaxing alum Mario Cristobal away from Oregon to return home.

“I’ve grown, I’m different as a … head coach, as a man, as I was at Miami,” Diaz added. “And certainly, the program is at a different place by every metric from when I was there. I’ve moved on, I’m at peace.

“There are still people in the program, on the staff and players, who I know and have a lot of respect for. But no different than honestly playing SMU last week with all of the familiar faces on that, there might be more familiar faces in that program than what we’re going to play this week.”

And that’s yet another reminder of how strangely this schedule — set before there was any notion Diaz would be Duke’s coach — aligns as something of a Diaz revenge tour.

Miami is the third of four former employers of Diaz, with Duke having already played Middle Tennessee and Florida State — also his alma mater — and heading to N.C. State next weekend. Additionally, UNC coach Mack Brown fired Diaz as his defensive coordinator when they were at Texas together.

And SMU came to Durham last week coached by Diaz’s offensive coordinator in his last two seasons at Miami, Rhett Lashlee, with several players — running back Brashard Smith scored twice and had over 100 yards, while Jahfari Harvey blocked the would-be walk-off field goal — who played for Diaz at Miami.

“We haven’t really talked about it at all,” defensive end Vincent Anthony Jr. said of Diaz’s Miami ties. “We aren’t really focused on that. He’s here, he’s a Duke Blue Devil, so that’s what we’re going to focus on and go down there on Saturday and get a win.”